


Caught Between THE DEVIL and the Deep Blue Sea

by PKA



Series: Major Arcana [5]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Season/Series 02
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-04
Updated: 2018-01-04
Packaged: 2019-02-28 09:36:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,243
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13268700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PKA/pseuds/PKA
Summary: Abigail Hobbs is dead and lives on in Dr Lecter's cliff house. But is it really a life at all?





	Caught Between THE DEVIL and the Deep Blue Sea

**Author's Note:**

  * For [RedFive](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RedFive/gifts).



> RedFive wanted a memory of Hannibal and Abigail either at the cliff house or during some father-daughter murder time. This is what I came up with! Thanks so much for participating in my giveaway, and thanks for being so patient with me! <3
> 
> This wouldn't be possible without my amazing beta [ fragile-teacup ](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Mrs_Gene_Hunt/pseuds/fragile-teacup/) who's always helping me with straightening out my style. Thank you so much!

Waves broke against the cliff without cease, rearing up, fighting against stone that was taking centuries to lose the battle. I could hear it even in bed, the push and pull of masses of water, which would, so I feared, drag me and the house into the depths one night. I was used to the voices of the forest, the crunching of wood and the calls of animals, the ominous whispers of leaves. The forest was honest. It told everyone who would listen of the dangers within it whereas the sea invited bathers, palliating the threat. Only the cliff existed within Dr Lecter’s house, only the sea. No seagulls orbited the sky above and I was, for the most part, entirely alone.

None of the rooms were closed off to me, but many had not been in use for years. A thick coat of dust lay on the furnishing covers. I removed none of them, leaving behind as few traces as I could. Like his house in Baltimore, this place testified to Dr Lecter’s financial and intellectual wealth and I felt uncomfortable, threatened. I used only the kitchen and the bathroom, the room I had moved into at Dr Lecter’s behest and the grand piano in the living room, from where I could hear the water’s rushing especially well.

Dr Lecter had asked me to improve my skills on the piano and I did as he had bid, on the one hand to please him, on the other to fight both the silence inside me and the sound of the sea. Learning the melodies and playing them gratified me. It was I who elicited them from the piano; it was I bringing the house to life. It was an attempt at evolving while the world around me had become static.

Clouds thin as paper covered the moon, which shone through them all the brighter as if to defy them. Light filled the living room, illuminating the black and white ivories and my fingers dancing upon them, ghostly in the grey light. I played Beethoven’s _Sonata quasi una Fantasia_ , as Dr Lecter had called it—the Moonlight Sonata—and in my interpretation, faster, with the pedal depressed throughout, it did not sound like a romantic night in moonshine at all, but like an expression of grief.

The music distracted me from my father, who I saw whenever I closed my eyes, who hid in the dark corners of my mind and whose thoughts buzzed behind my closed lids. His lifeless body, showcased in Dr Lecter’s office, had burned itself into my subconscious. I had learned to fear the night, sleep: to expect waking up after a nightmare. Those were the hours in which I craved company: to feel a warm body beside me, reminding me I was alive.

“I didn’t hear you drive up”, I said. I finished playing the first movement before letting the music fade into darkness.

“Don’t stop playing, Abigail. You have made great progress.”

Dr Lecter stepped closer. The moonlight filtering through the window outlined his silhouette from the black of the room with soft edges. It was always night when he came.

I obeyed his wish and continued where I had left off. Dr Lecter didn’t move. His coat was draped over his arm and he watched me, waiting in the semi-dark. I felt his gaze on me until I struck the last note, after which I turned around with a smile, pleased to see him.

I never knew when he would come or go. He appeared like a phantom, without ever conveying the impression that he wanted to check on me. It was a gift, almost, to have him there, if only for a few hours. There were clocks and calendars in the house. Without them, all connection to reality would have been completely lost. I existed within it and yet separately, as if the house was a sanctuary at the edge of the universe. When Dr Lecter came to visit, time seemed to pass more quickly—as if trying to compensate for what previously it had forgotten.

“You are still having problems with the Presto Agitato.”

I grimaced, maintaining the smile. “It’s difficult. Especially when you learn it just from sheet music.”

Dr Lecter put down his coat and approached the piano. I shifted on the bench, letting him sit down next to me. His body smelled like snow, like car seat leather and a masculine aftershave I couldn’t place.

He immediately started with the third movement. While I, still learning, played it slowly, his fingers scurried over the ivories, just as it was intended to be played. With two hundred beats a minute, the melody sounded entirely different. Dr Lecter played it lively, almost wild, and it evoked a different image than my melancholic version. It sounded… angry.

I hardly knew whether I should focus on his hands or face. Even his eyes darted in concentration, but something in his countenance was off. His impervious shell, which I would have liked to have had myself, had been inflicted with a tiny crack. Something was on his mind. One evening he had told me about his childhood and his sister, Mischa. It had been one of the very few conversations in which he had shared something intimate; usually we talked about me, about my father. But this new thing, that punctured his façade and made his eyes grow black and endless, he would not share. 

I had to think of Will Graham.

Dr Lecter finished the piece. A thin layer of sweat had formed at his temples, shimmering in the moonlight. He looked at me, his smile gentle.

“That was beautiful.”

He inclined his head a little, accepting the compliment, thanking me and ending the short lesson simultaneously.

For a moment we continued sitting together, merely watching each other. He too was trying to comprehend how I felt, as if we needed to synchronize after our time apart. I had always liked to keep routes open for emergencies; to know, always, that I’d be able to escape a situation if I needed to, even if it meant climbing walls. Now, hemmed in by him and the window which looked out to the small courtyard that only led to the sea, there was none.

We were playing a dangerous game of honesty and false trails. He did not see my true self either—I was playing a role for him as well. The same I had played for Dad, practiced and perfected for survival: the accomplice that Dr Lecter treated gently and as an equal.

“Is it time?” I asked.

He nodded. “Will has made up his mind.” He examined me again, looked deep into my eyes. “What do you feel at the thought of seeing Will again? Hate? Fear? Despair? Do you feel happiness? Or are you just numb?”

Will Graham had avoided being near me. The image of my father was omnipresent. Will Graham reminded me—more than Dr Lecter—of him and I was a reminder that he had killed him. Despite his empathy, he could only see that which he wanted in me: a daughter, someone he could care about. A victim. His profound righteousness had scared me and still did. What would he have thought of me had he known just how many innocent girls I had driven into the arms of my father?

“I feel like an empty well. All that is spoken into me echoes within.”

To assure my survival I had learned to manipulate situations in a way that suited me. I had become good at being what people wanted to see in me and had left my own true self behind.

After the dinner with Freddie Lounds, Dr Lecter had told me I was free. And for a moment I had felt that way too, telling him the truth about me, being held in his arms and being told that he and Will would protect me. But I was not free. I had gone from the clutches of my father to Dr Lecter, and in the end he had disposed of me like an old puppet to keep Will by his side. The ear I had sacrificed was an hourly reminder of whom his love belonged to. To Dr Lecter I too was just a pawn in his game, a lure he could use—even if he liked me. I was not naïve enough to believe his affection could protect me.

And he did feel affection. Now he extended his hand, brushing my hair behind my remaining ear. “You are not empty, Abigail. Your father lives on inside you.”

I thought of Dr Lecter’s sister and wondered if he saw something of her in me. Did I remind him of her? It would have explained so much, yet I did not dare ask him. He had not achieved with her what he had given me. He still had not processed her loss.

“You should go to bed. Tomorrow is going to be an important day.”

“Shall I pack?”

His gaze was steady. “Yes. Bring only what you need.”

In the long days spent in Dr Lecter’s house, I had had much time to think about the future. Florence. There we would build a new life, a shared one. Dr Lecter, Will Graham and I. The prospect of a future in the company of these two men, who knew what I had done and what I was, was a freeing and simultaneously frightening notion, and entirely different from what I had once envisioned for myself. I thought about this while trying to pack my bag the next morning, looking for things I wanted to keep. The bag stayed empty.

I had wanted to work with the FBI for a short while. This fantasy had dissolved, had been destroyed prematurely. A wolf in sheep’s clothing wanting to show the world that she was more than her father. Normal. Break through the cycle, live a life that was contingent on happiness, without blood and murder, without hunters and hunted.

It would never be like that. I would always be part of this cosmos. I wouldn’t have known where to go anyway. There was no place I could return to, no place to call home anymore. Just this house,which I despised and would leave shortly. Just Dr Lecter, who had bound me to him. And I was becoming more and more like him each day.

The sea pulled me to it for the last time. While Dr Lecter stowed his own baggage in the Bentley, I dared approach the bluff. The sun rose above the water, creating an orange line cutting into two slices of blue. I looked over the edge of the cliff. The water seemed impossibly far away.

I considered my options and broke them down into two. A new life or no life at all. I had been a captive for years on end and didn’t want to spend another day like that. If I was unwilling to lose what remained of my true self, I had to slip out of my familiar role. When I had said my goodbyes to Dad and had stored all I needed of him in my head, Dr Lecter had said I should never be ashamed of who I was. But what I was, was passive. I had never had the opportunity to intervene. Waves had thrown me against the cliff, again and again, until I had learned to soften the impact.

Unlike the way it had been with my father, I had given Dr Lecter control over me of my own volition. Once we arrived in Florence, once I’d left my prison behind, I would stop doing only what others asked of me. I would spread my wings, stuck together for so long, and explore new horizons.

I had learned that love as I had become acquainted with the term did not exist. Love was nothing beautiful or pure, but a jealous beast, always teetering on the edge of abuse. “If he loved you, he wouldn’t treat you this way,” I had told Marissa once, when her boyfriend had kissed a girl from parallel class. But my father had loved me, and he had tried to kill me. Perhaps he lived on inside me, but there was still infinitely more space within me.

Dr Lecter approached, raising his head to the sun with closed eyes, enjoying the first warming rays. He gave me a moment to say goodbye, perhaps even taking it himself. He had never looked so fragile.

I expressed a thought that had occurred to me the evening before, a thought that only now took full shape: “And if, as you say, there’s room in me for my father, why is there no room in you for Mischa?”

Dr Lecter looked satisfied, but why I could not say. He opened his eyes, looked at me briefly, then away. For a long moment we both stared toward the sun.

“Shall we?”

Dr Lecter preceded. I followed him to his car with slow, measured steps, letting pieces of my old life fall away footstep by footstep. The sky above us was cloudless, and the higher the sun rose, the paler its blue backdrop became. It looked like becoming a sunny day, a day that could finally beat this year’s persistent winter, but there was something in the air. It would rain tonight.

**Author's Note:**

> I like constructive criticism, so if you want to offer any, please feel free to!
> 
> Come visit me on my [tumblr](http://www.pka42.tumblr.com/)!


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